


Sky Pilot

by 1stAmndmntGirl



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 1968, Brutality, Death, Gay, Gay Sex, Khe Sanh, M/M, Sex, Slash, Vietnam Conflict, Violence, War, m/m - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-28
Updated: 2013-05-28
Packaged: 2017-12-13 05:41:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/820649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/1stAmndmntGirl/pseuds/1stAmndmntGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Private Dean Winchester is a Marine in Vietnam circa 1968. Stationed at the Khe Sanh Combat Base, he unwillingly copes with a mental trauma by talking to the base chaplain, Father Castiel Novak. Somehow, things get muddled for both men, and lines get crossed. </p><p>This story will feature plenty of musical references because that's how I roll.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sky Pilot

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry for the length and if the characters seem off, but I wrote this in a rush because I'm busy working on my last final.  
> More will be released either at the end of the week or sometime next week, depending on how busy I am.

            This humidity was unbearable, and the poorly packed wound in his shoulder was aching and oozing in protest. With his army greens sticking to him like he put them on in the shower, Dean Winchester tried not to show his discomfort to the twelve other men in his squad as he followed formation to the base. They trotted in time, and he knew Sammy would’ve gotten a kick out of seeing his big brother marching around like the grunt he was. In fact, Sammy would have busted a rib laughing at Dean—defiance of government authority embodied—taking someone else’s orders.

            He couldn’t lie to himself. If Sammy saw him here, he would have been worried sick about the possibility of an ambush, as was Dean. Ever since he started hearing horror stories of ‘Nam from the vets coming through his garage, he’d had night terrors about bullets flying through the air like a swarm of cicada, ringing and sharp. The smell of gun smoke and the sting of the bullet spearing through the skin. The screams of his friends dying. Of him dying.

           One of these customers had been a hometown kid that he and Sammy grew up with, even eating dinner at his house a time or twelve. He eagerly enlisted as soon as the conflict began, dropping his football scholarship to do it. Now he was nineteen years old and minus one leg knee-down, his eyes dead and his smile hollow as he watched Dean change the radiator coil in his Plymouth. Even without the missing limb, the mental baggage he brought home from the front ensured he wouldn’t be playing ball anytime soon. It probably didn’t help that his girlfriend was off at Berkley with all her anti-war buddies, chanting about soldiers being baby killers.

           Mentally, Dean shuddered. He’d never end up like that. He couldn’t, because he was all Sammy had.

           “Double time!” the squad sergeant ordered. The troops picked up their pace as the tops of the base buildings became clearer over the thick trees that surrounded them from the second they disembarked from the helicopter the week before. Instead of heading straight to the Khe Sanh Combat Base like they were supposed to, they had gone to back another squad until they could receive proper reinforcements.

           He hadn’t even been here a week and he was already wounded, his buddy Kevin from basic killed in the fight—no, no, according to Staff Sergeant Crowley, it was a “squabble”, although squabbles didn’t end in a kid Sammy’s age getting half of his neck shot off by a lone wannabe-sniper with a stolen M-1 rifle and having him choke to death on his own blood. Dean had been shot trying to help Kevin, so Crowley just had Adam the medic pack the wound until they could get to the base so as not to run low on supplies. Since they were only a few hours from base, Crowley had ordered him to “take it like a man”. The guy was as sadistic as the devil himself.

           Exhausted, dehydrated, and in pain, Dean bit down on his lip, suppressing a groan as his M-14 grew heavier and heavier, along with his pack. They were only a mile or two from the base, and he could hold out. He would make himself hold out, because he’d already made an ass of himself in front of Staff Sergeant Crowley, and he didn’t want to hear the guy’s mocking laughter again. Hell, he could swear he heard a chuckle coming from him, on the other side of the formation in between snapping at his men to quit running like girls.

           He’d been shot before, but that had been when he and Sammy were kids playing around with their dad’s shotgun one day, and a misfire on Sam’s behalf sent a smattering of buckshot into Dean’s calf. It was actually still there, because neither had wanted to fess up to their dad what happened. Instead, they cleaned it up and Dean walked with a slight limp for a few weeks. Their father must’ve figured it out somehow, though, because not a month later, he started teaching his boys how to shoot all of the guns he’d collected since leaving the Marines in ’47.

           Shaking the memory away, Dean came back to the present, forcing himself to pay attention to his surroundings, lest they run across another Charlie soldier. They were probably too close to the base by now, but he wasn’t going to take the chance. Concentrating on his uneven breaths, he counted his footfalls until they arrived and he could go see a doctor for the agony that was his shoulder.

_One, two, three._

           He could see more detail on the rooftops of the base. A couple of them looked like they were constructed from tin.

_Four, five, six._

           He could see through the copse of trees a clearing not too far ahead, signaling a road. Roads were easier to walk on, and he wouldn’t trip every five minutes over a tree root.

_Seven, eight, nine._

           Unfortunately, traveling on a road meant they’d be traveling within the sight and range of any enemy soldiers bold enough to brave the area nearest the base.

_Ten, eleven, twel—_

           “Still bleeding, Private Winchester?” Crowley hissed into his ear, almost shocking him into a misstep. The older, shorter man’s sarcastic voice teased his every nerve.

           Taking a second to check his tongue, Dean replied, “Sir, yes, sir.”

           “Hurt, does it?”

           Dean was silent, keeping his eyes on Private Ash’s jerry-rigged radio. It had been shot once, but somehow, due to some unrecognized technological genius, the kid had fixed it with a few scraps of broken metal, vine from the trees, and a piece of gum. 

           “Answer me, Private.”

           Through his teeth, he replied, “Sir, yes, sir.”

           Clicking his tongue in disappointment, Crowley leaned closer to Dean, severely invading his personal space. “See Winchester? This is why we follow orders. An errant bullet doesn’t nick you and Private Tran would still with us, not bled out and waiting for transport.”

           Dean’s nostrils flared and he bit his cheek until it bled, trying not to snap and beat the man to death with only his fists. “Sir, yes, sir.”

           Chuckling darkly, Crowley clapped a hand onto Dean’s shoulder, sending lightning-hot pain through his body and buckling his legs. Just barely restraining the oncoming blackout, Dean stopped running, gasping for air through the agony. Crowley stood beside him, his hand still on his shoulder.

           “Get—the—fuck—off.” Dean snarled.

           Tightening his grip, Crowley bent over and asked, “What was that, boy?”

           “Get the fuck off me, goddamnit!” Dean shouted, his temper barely restrained.

           The rest of the squad stopped, turning to see the commotion. “Did I tell you boys to stop marching?”

           “Sir, no, sir!” the squad chanted back.

           Waiting a moment to see if they would get the hint, Crowley sighed dramatically and ordered, “Then get fucking moving!”

           They returned to formation and marched forward, Ash in the back now that Dean was out of line. He snuck a glance back, but when he noticed Crowley was still watching, he faced forward and kept time with the rest of the guys.

           Crowley tightened his grip again, and Dean panted, trying to stay conscious. The butt of his gun would look so good against Crowley’s face, but he couldn’t muster up the strength to raise his arm that high. Instead, he glared up into the man’s brown eyes and snide smirk.

           “Do you know why I don’t like you, Winchester?”

           Resisting the urge to drop the older man to the ground and beat him senseless, Dean spat, “No, so why don’t you tell me, fuckface?”

           The corner of Crowley’s mouth twitched as he bent low. “I don’t like you because you’re incompetent, defiant, and just to lay all the cards on the table, I think you were a little too close to Private Tran. I don’t know what they told you about the Marines, boy, but your ‘type’ belongs in San Francisco, not Vietnam.”

           Crowley didn’t like him because he thought he was gay? “I don’t know where you got your information, but I’ve got a half a dozen girls back home. Kevin reminded me of my little brother, nothing gay about it. So get the fuck off me before I take out your fucking kneecap.”

           Spearing two fingers into the wound, Crowley sneered as Dean cried out, his body locked in agony. “Speak to me like that again, Private, and I’ll have your head on a fucking stick! It’s easy to kill a man out here, so don’t think I wouldn’t take my shot if given the chance. Do you understand, or does that grease monkey brain of yours not think outside of an engine?”

           Crowley hooked his fingers and pulled up, tearing something. “Do you understand, Private?”

           “Fuck! I got it!”

           Crowley dug in harder and Dean howled. “I am your superior officer. Care to try again?”

           “Sir, yes, sir!”

           Letting go of his shoulder, Crowley wiped the blood from his fingers on Dean’s sleeve. “Double-time to the base, Private. March!”

           Eyes unfocused from the pulsating fire stemming from his shoulder and the fury singing his veins, Dean tried to get up and stumbled, unsure of how to breathe.

           Crowley stood beside him, waiting impatiently as Dean carefully rose from his knees to his boots. With a slap to his face to wake him up, he started trotting, taking great pains to avoid shifting his pack and his gun around.

           Jogging alongside him, Crowley asked, “Did I say trot like a fucking pony, or did I say double-time?”

           Glaring at the ground, Dean held his weary tongue and stepped up his pace.

           To keep himself awake, he mouthed the words to “Don’t Bring Me Down” by Eric Burdon and The Animals. When the fuzziness came over him again, he switched it up to “Fire” by The Jimi Hendrix Experience. Unfortunately, he was having trouble remembering the lyrics, and ended up just keeping time with the sound of Crowley’s boots pounding the packed dirt.

           His feet felt like they were weighted with cement, and he was sure that every step he took was going to send him sprawling in the dirt. Somehow, they caught up with the rest of the squad, and they reached the base soon after.

           Far from his tired expectation of a legitimate military base lined with twelve-foot high walls, guard towers, and a patrol, Khe Sanh Combat Base was pretty low-grade. It was a bunch of rickety shacks, tents, an airfield, and what looked like two actual buildings were surrounded by jungle on all sides. Smoke was coming from a few of the buildings, and there were olive-green jeeps all over the place, carrying supplies, carting personnel around, or rushing to one of the actual buildings with what looked like bodies in the back.

           Dean tripped and bumped into Ash, and he would have fallen had Ash not turned around and gripped his bicep and yanked him up, surprisingly strong for such a scrawny little guy. “Winchester, c’mon. Get up, man. The hospital tent’s right there.”

           Looking up through a mental fog, Dean’s eyes tried to lock onto Ash’s, but apparently, his exhaustion, dehydration, and blood loss was taking full effect.

           “Winchester! To your feet!” Crowley ordered to no avail. Dean couldn’t even stand on his own, his flesh clammy and pale. His expression was one of determination, but that wasn’t going to get him anywhere.

           Trying to lay his feet solidly on the ground, Dean pushed against Ash to stand on his own. He was successful, and took a few steps before collapsing on his face.


End file.
